I, Cyborg, by Kevin Warwick

Cringe-making world of 'Captain Cyborg'

Kevin Warwick's flat Coventry vowels have become a feature of the media landscape, a sign that things are sluggish in the world of "just fancy that!", when newsdesks need relief from suicide bombers and collapsing stock markets. They love the proclamations of the professor of cybernetics at Reading University – that machines will take over from humans, that implanting radio transmitters in his arm means he's a cyborg, that he has transmitted "emotions" over the internet.

It's a sideshow to the real scientific endeavour out there: using genetics to develop new drugs, building computers that do useful things reliably and quickly, and integrating them all into society. Not sticking them in arms for publicity value.

Science writers wish "Captain Cyborg", as the Register website dubs him, would do something truly ground-breaking. Little chance. To him, the 2002 operation in which he had microscopic pins implanted in his arm, with wires to relay electrical signals to and from his nervous system, or the 1998 operation that implanted a radio transmitter so doors would open automatically, is far more important than some American work done in 1995. Then, a blind man had an electrode put into his optic nerve; when electric signals were sent into it, he reported seeing "a little light". Now that's what I call a breakthrough.

And this book? Cringe-making from start to finish. "Many people and robots helped me make this book possible", it begins. Hang on – "helped me make this book possible"? It's a shining example of his scrambled thinking. "My agent... was brilliant in winning an extortionate deal for me." How delightful for the publishers to know they got screwed. "Random House... have done fantastically well in turning my vague meanderings into what I hope is a readable bestseller."

Bestseller? Not if I can help it. Please ignore this book. It's badly written and badly edited, though that means you get to see how sloppy some of his thinking is. For example: with an implant in your arm, he suggests, you could "transmit different electronic patterns on to the nervous system to bring about a sensation equivalent to that of drinking bourbon, rum or even coffee!"

No, you couldn't. Not even with the world's biggest array of pins stuck into your spine – those liquids cause chemical changes in the brain, which you can't mimic by stimulating nerves. The brain knows when the nerves are acting strangely; ask anyone with multiple sclerosis.

Warwick is at pains to stress his workload, and how risky his operations were. I'm underwhelmed. He is more like the freaks who undergo plastic surgery for the fun of it: the Bride of Wildenstein of cybernetics.

The last chapter coyly pretends to have been written in 2050, predicting that everyone will be connected to the Net and living in silicon-enhanced nirvana. I'll make a counter-prediction. In 2050, people will still be starving on an indecent scale in Africa, the glaciers will still be melting, and the rich will have got richer. And neither you nor I will be a cyborg.